Swim Until You Can't See Land
by Addicted-To-Sugar-Quills
Summary: Seamus Finnegan from the battle of Hogwarts to it's 25th anniversary. Seamus Finnegan/Lavender Brown & Seamus Finnegan/OFC


_This is for my amazing beta and best friend (Don't-need-no-ammortentia on tumblr) who today reminded me that I wrote the first few paragraphs of this inside her 16th birthday card. As of tomorrow we'll be going to uni in different cities, so it's probably about time it was finished._

 **Swim Until You Can't See Land**

Seamus Finnegan stands out on the battlements of Hogwarts after the war has been won with the sun rising all around him. Slithers of pink, orange and an unearthly gold colour breaking through the heavy clouds. It reminds him of genesis, the familiar words of stories (something more than myth, less than fact) that his grandfather had told him as a child.

'Let there be light'.

It echoes in his head like a promise of something to come.

His grandfather on his Da's side was a pastor. The church in which he preached sat in the middle of a small town just outside of Craigavon, and, for all the bravado and cynicism Seamus displays, there is still a part of him that's loyal to its dusty pews and the very different kind of magic held therein. At eighteen he is not overtly a religious man. He has as many- more even- questions about the words in the Bible as anyone else, but when, in the quiet darkness of the night, he rages against the world and everybody in it, he rages against God. Maybe that isn't fair- to attribute all of the blame and none of the glory, but the world is not a fair place and Seamus never claims to be a good man.

His relationship with Lavender is much like his relationship with God- filled with love and anger, worship and disappointment. To him she is a figurehead, disturbingly beautiful and ugly all at once. She is a torn up childhood, an effigy to innocence lost.

Like him, she survives the war (through luck or miracle or some devilish combination of the two) though he is under no illusions as to what would have happened had she died. She'd asked him once and he'd lied (to spare her feelings, his own guilt? He doesn't know) but he knows that he would have moved on and picked up the pieces and survived. He would have missed her, but he would have lived.

He tells her that he would have died.

He tells her a lot of things.

She is in St. Mungo's for two weeks after the battle- open wounds that will scab and then scar with the passage of time marring her face, torso and arms. Seamus tells her she is beautiful and believes it, but he finds her beauty in spite of her scars and not because of them – such a subtle difference for something that matters so much in the end.

She is released in time for the funerals and they stand together, stony faced and all in black, for eulogy after eulogy and then, tired and wracked with second-hand grief, they board a plane.

They arrive in Ireland with an old school truck hastily stuffed with their belongings and looking wrecked to all the world. Seamus' dad collects them at the airport; he is a balding man, fifty or so who drives a Volvo and wears his own grief like a crown around his head. He hefts open the boot, shoving a box of books over to one side to make room for their luggage. The books are covered over in a fine layer of dust and Seamus reads that as a bad sign.

His father was, is- he supposes- a professor of literature. Both his parents were the academic type, better at wars of words than cold hard reality. His mother had been a formidable woman, a gifted enough witch, but always happier with her head in a book, and his father would have been no more use in a duel than the manuscripts he'd always told Seamus were the best weapons one could ever possess. That is a falsehood that Seamus will never forgive- all the book learning in the world only made his mother an easier target when the Deatheaters had come a calling.

They stay, the three of them, in the house that Seamus grew up in, for over a year and the pretending gets easier every day. Pretending not to notice that his Da hasn't slept in the master a single night since they got there, that his Mam's reading glasses aren't still lying on the kitchen counter where she'd left them the day she'd gone out to work and never come home. Pretending that Lavender doesn't wake up screaming almost every night, that she isn't a ruin of the girl she used to be. Pretending that he hadn't broken his wrist punching a shocked hole in the wall when the sky'd lit up green on New Year's Eve. Pretending.

It gets easier.

Lavender is a lacework of scars held together with half-truths and good intentions. She's an unexploded bomb- the worst kind, hidden in a sunken ditch in one of those boarded up tenements frequented by curious children and strays. He loves her in spite of common sense- destructive and passionate and all at once. There is no future for love like that but, as has always been their greatest fault, they try.

There are good days too, though. Some mornings Lavender will come downstairs with her nails painted vivid pink and he'll lean over and kiss her full on the mouth when she reaches over him for a slice of toast. On those days he'll skive off work and they'll spend the morning walking the harbour and taking pictures for tourists. They'll have fish and chips for lunch, their feet dangling over the sea wall and in the evening they'll stroll lazily back to the house holding hands against the sunset.

It's on one of those days that they decide to go home.

Parvati has a daughter. The tiny thing in the picture she sends is called Savannah Lavender and that in itself is reason enough to visit. Once they are back in London, staying in rooms above the Leaky which Hannah Abbott now owns and abjectly refuses to accept any payment for, they find themselves sucked back into the social circle they'd abandoned near on two years ago.

The remnants of the DA have barbeques in the beer garden at the Leakey Cauldron on the first Saturday of every month and it is made clear to them that the event is not optional. It's a sunny day, gorgeous May weather trying, as usual, to fool them into digging out the summer wardrobe and it soon becomes apparent to the both of them how much they have missed. None more so that when he holds the baby. Parvati is only twenty one- the same age as Seamus and only a little older than Lavender- and he finds it hard to comprehend that she could be a mother when he's only ever considered becoming a father in the abstract- the vacuity of someday.

The people around them, their peers, are growing up- taking leaps and skipping steps along the road, the way people do when they have stared death in the face and are rushing to do everything all at once in case that same possibility comes round again. Angelina has a slight baby bump and though it is clear that George Weasley is the father no-one is quite sure about how, when or even if they got together. Neville walks into the pub one night and kisses Hannah over the countertop as if it's the most natural thing in the world and Susan's marrying Ernie in the autumn. It is lovely and somewhat confusing all at once.

On that early summer afternoon, surrounded by their friends and a kind of hope for the future that seems to buzz in the air, it is easy to believe in the myth. Easy to believe that all the war time romances had a happy ending and easy to believe that that kind of happiness lasts forever. So they stain their shoes dancing on the grass to songs that were old before they were even born and decide to move to the city in search of something that, even then, eluded them.

In a giddy haze they buy a flat in muggle London; a small but comfortable house on the second floor of a modern block, with a bright red door and window boxes they plant with tiny coloured flowers and rosemary for remembrance. They paint the walls of their home and paper the cracks in their relationship until they've fooled themselves into believing that they are okay and that things have got better.

Lavender gets a job at Madame Malkins in Diagon Alley and she loves it. She comes back in the late afternoon with swathes of fabric and designs, and tailors robes while she waits for him to come home. They go out for dinner most nights, drink too much, stumble into bed in the wee hours and wake up screaming anyway in a vicious cycle of not enough sleep and paranoia.

They love each other like it will solve anything. They do everything right-the way society dictates you're supposed to. He proposes and they get married in a cavernous church on a dusky winter morning not quite a year later. They read the paper on a Sunday morning and attend parties hanging off of each other's arms. They make plans and have dreams that wind on into the night, lost to the pressures of time and expectation.

They have a daughter.

Chloe Grace Finnegan.

She is born in an unusually cold March, with the snow lying thick on the ground around the hospital. She is teeny, with ten fingers and ten toes. Perfect and heart-breaking. The first time he holds her she is less than ten minutes old, wrapped up in a white blanket and wearing a little hat that Lavender's mother had knitted for her own daughter a lifetime ago. While Lavender sleeps, he rocks their little girl back and forth, silhouetted against the glass of the rooms only window, tracing a single calloused finger against her cheek. He lifts her up so that her forehead is pressed gently to his jaw and whispers, "In a kinder world." He doesn't say anything else because in a kinder world she wouldn't exist and besides, he's not even sure there's such a thing as a kind world- only kind people.

He is not a kind person, so he settles with, "I'm sorry," and a kiss.

Chloe breaks the damn. Between them they have given her everything they have that is good which has left them with nothing for each other.

They start with yelling- meaningless stuff that bounces off and rolls away because it was never meant to be personal. The destructive all-consuming side of their relationship isn't new and smashed glasses and noise complaints aren't anything to write home about. Then they graduate to sniping and aggravated hand gestures and finally to silence.

In the end it's the silence that kills them.

He tries to sift back through the memories for the good times. Rose tinted days of strong coffee in the morning and Chloe running through the park in her welly boots and yellow duffle coat. Of ice cream and camping in the Lake District with a grumpy toddler and his daughter calling him dad for the first time in that proper little English accent she'd inherited from her mother. He remembers his mam talking to him as a kid, her Irish lilt telling him that the good times will always outweigh the bad and he hates her for that untruth. He hates her for not being there and for not answering when he looks to the sky and asks her what he should do.

The choice is out of his hands, as it turns out. Lavender tells him to leave and he goes. He leaves their little house in London, leaves his wife and daughter and their (hideous little rat) dog behind him. He goes because she tells him to, and because he's sick of pretending everything is going to be alright.

He hates that he left Chloe. She blinks up at him uncomprehendingly when he tries to explain what's going on and seems to understand only too late, clinging to his legs and crying as he calls her his special girl and hugs her tight . One last time. She is the collateral damage to the bomb that it her parents' marriage. She catches the worst of the shrapnel and it festers inside of her- all that pain and hurt and misunderstanding eating away until the vulnerable little girl inside of her is encased in a hard shell of caustic words and anger.

Seamus isn't around for that- to watch Chloe implode. He finds himself disappearing for weeks at a time only to pop up at strange intervals, half formed excuses that die on his tongue when he sees the disappointment on Lavenders face. Lavender, who for all her brokenness is a better parent than he ever was. Its better this way, he tells himself, to take a sharp exit, leave them to it and pretend he doesn't miss his daughter in a way that causes him actual physical pain. It's easier on everyone that way.

Once again he returns to Ireland and to his childhood home. This time however he returns with a definitive need to start over so, over the course of several long weeks, he bullies and cajoles his Da into sorting through his mam's old things. They clean the house from top to bottom, keeping only a few things; the pictures and almost all of the jewellery (boxed up and saved for Chloe when she's old enough), but the reading glasses disappear from the kitchen counter and boxes of clothes, books and all sorts of odds and ends make their way to the charity shops.

In the end they both feel lighter, as if some great and terrible weight has been lifted from their collective chest, and for once, Seamus doesn't feel he's pretending when he says that it gets easier.

Around the time of Chloe's sixth birthday he meets a woman. A nurse from one of the local hospitals, who fixes him up after an altercation with a guy who hadn't liked the look of him at the pub. "You know fighting like this isn't going to get you anywhere." She'd told him, smirking as he'd winced when she'd cleaned out the cut above his eye with antiseptic.

"Who says I'm going somewhere?"

"Oh," she'd told him knowingly, a rough lilt to her voice, "Everybody's going somewhere."

As it turns out, their going in the same direction- or maybe it's the opposite, maybe they've been heading towards each other all this time and have only just now finally hit. Either way, she's the best thing in his life. It's easy to be with her, in a way it never was with Lavender.

He tells her his past after they've been going out together for a year. He's already decided that she'd the one and this feels like the final test- the final acceptance he needs to get on with this new life he's building for himself. He tells her about his family, his mother and father and where it all went wrong with Lavender; tells her about magic and war and the bits of him that he suspects are smashed up beyond repair.

When he's finished, she doesn't say anything reply. She simply lets the silence spread out between them and slowly reaches out to take his hand as they sit together in the half-dark of his living room.

He marries her two years later. It's a small affair, just family and a few, select friends. Dean brings Chloe over on the ferry, the 12 o'clock from Liverpool to Dublin and hires a car for the drive from the terminal to Seamus and Briana's little village house. Out of respect for the fact that ninety odd percent of the guests are muggles, they're doing everything the non-magical way, but as the clock ticks past the time Chloe sets foot on Irish soil, it's all he can do to not to apparate to the station and sweep his kid up into his arms and swing her round until she screams.

The Chloe who runs up his front drive- pirate themed backpack bouncing up and down on her back, toy kneazle tucked up underneath her arm- is taller than he remembers. She's growing every day and he's missing that, missing _her._ Like the stories he'd read to her when she was tiny, he's omitting words - skipping pages- in an attempt to get to the good bits and forgetting that getting there's half the journey. She talks at him a mile a minute, vocabulary remarkable compared to the stop-start sentences he's used to hearing from her, and he spends as much of the two days leading up to the ceremony as possible just chatting to her about the mundane stuff. School, her favourite foods, her best friends kitten and all those other things that seem so trivial but are as important to him as if she was telling him the meaning of life and the point of the universe. Not that she won't be someday. She's his daughter- she can do anything.

She has flowers wrapped in her hair as she sits beside him at the reception, wriggling with excitement and blushing every time someone tells her how pretty she looks. He's relieved at how well Briana's family have taken to his daughter, letting her dance around on their toes and feeding her more sugar than his ex-wife would probably like. He's found himself doing that more and more often lately- referring to Lavender as his ex-wife as if it will somehow bury her. As if it will make him forget that she was ever more than a cardboard cut-out, a temporary stand in for happiness, instead of a person that shaped a huge part of the man he is now. Lavender and his conflicting feelings about her aside, that moment - with Chloe on one side, Briana on the other- is one of the best memories of his life. An untarnished moment, one of only a few he has with his daughter.

All too soon, Chloe is gone and all he has to remember that she had ever visited is a framed picture of her standing, laughing, on the front step of the cottage. He feels her absence in the six am silences, Saturday lie-ins and the days when he passes anxious dads pulling dawdling kids behind them on his way to work. Despite this he sees her only sparingly in the next few years: a couple of times after his second daughter, her little sister Aoife, is born; a beautiful week the summer she'd turned ten and had spent a few days helping him paint the walls of the café he'd plunged all his savings into opening; and the rare weekend in between. They write letters though, short ones at first but longer and longer every month as her penmanship and vocabulary improve. He's never been much of a writer, the opposite of his literary parents in that respect, but he makes an effort for Chloe, telling her the stuff that happens in his life- however bizarre he might find it; she seems to love stories about the customers in his café and little anecdotes about Aoife learning to walk and talk.

Just after her eleventh birthday, a couple of weeks before she leaves for her first year at Hogwarts, she sends him a letter by an owl she tells him that Lavender has just bought her. "She wants me to come see her off at the train station." He tells Brianna, curled up on the sofa on the other side of the room, the fire casting strange shadows across the carpet between them.

She pulls herself into a sitting position with some difficulty, nearly eight months pregnant stomach getting in the way, "Of course you have to go." She tells him, "Don't you bloody well be stupid Seamus Finnegan. She's your daughter."

"I know." He sighs. "It's not that. It's just that she's practically grown up now and I've already missed so much."

She smiles softly at him, "You aren't getting broody on me are you?"

He laughs,

"Stay the night with Dean," Briana continues, "Demelza won't mind - You two can go out, get pissed and reminisce about old times."

He is quiet for a long moment, "That's the problem though, isn't it? For us 'old times' means killing people in the same hall Chloe's going to eat dinner and watching our friends get tortured where she might end up sleeping at night." He has to clasp his hands together to stop them trembling and he doesn't look up, will not meet her eyes until she is standing directly in front of him.

"Seamus," she says softly in the kind of voice she usually reserves for the little kids she treats at the hospital, "Come here."

She stretches out her hand

He looks down, resisting. "The last time I was on that platform, my mam was there with me."

"Come here," she repeats, dragging him out of his seat and wrapping her arms around him, her chin tucked into his shoulder. She holds him there, swaying back and forth in an clumsy almost dance until he's stopped shaking and has gained back enough control to pretend his cheek aren't wet with tears.

"Write to her." She tells him, "Let her know you're coming and then we'll go to bed."

He doesn't make it to the station in the end. He spends the last days of August with a sick new baby and a sick wife, worried out of his mind and barely able to function on what little sleep he's managed to grab. To tell the absolute truth, he completely forgets about his eldest daughter until he's wrestling Aoife into a pair of dungarees on the hastily cleared kitchen table and he finds himself face to face with the calendar. The calendar with September the first circled in bright red pen. The date he'd stumbled through without realising its significance.

He sends Chloe a rambling missive of unreserved apology not an hour later- pouring out everything he has to try to explain why he hadn't been there, fully aware that every word he writes probably seems like the worst kind of excuse to her.

She doesn't write back.

He sends her another letter.

She doesn't reply.

He tries again.

Her silence is deafening.

On Christmas Eve, two days after she's back from school for the holidays, he climbs the winding staircase up to the flat with the red door he and Lavender had bought back when they'd been young and in love and not expecting anything to go quite as wrong as it had.

Lavender, still beautiful, still cold, greets his presence at her door in stony silence. "She won't see you."

"Please," he says, a hint of desperation in his voice, "Please can't you just-"

She cuts over him, derision layered into her voice, "She won't see you, Seamus. You fucked up." Her lip curls, "Do us all a favour, go back to your shiny new family and leave us the hell alone."

The door slams in his face, coming to a short sharp stop inches away from his nose, and he simply stands there for a few moments, his breath, a white fog in the freezing air, coming in ragged gasps of anger an utter misery.

That's that. He goes back to Ireland and throws himself into his business and his family, and he tells himself that he doesn't have time to miss her anymore. It's a barefaced lie- the worst kind of self-delusion- but he keeps up the charade, only learning about her through the occasional report and photograph from Dean or Neville (whose sympathy for the situation manages to outweigh any judgement he might have of Seamus' parenting skills).

He hangs the photos on the wall- nestled between ever changing shots of his younger two growing like weeds- and he carefully saves the letters, folding them up inside a box that had been one of the few things he'd saved after clearing out his mam's belongings. He documents her presence in every room of the cottage- always there, a not quite ghost that haunts his house like a memory.

It's nearly five whole years before he sees her again.

His father dies out of the blue a few weeks before the end of the Hogwarts term of Chloe's fifth year and Seamus, knowing that his daughter was more than a little fond of her grandfather makes the executive decision to pull her out of school early. He gets Lavenders permission, dragging to her off to a neutral location- a small café outside of the centre of London- and pleading his case. He'll never tell anyone exactly what was said between the two of them that day, caustic words and compassion exchanged interchangeably between sips of watery coffee, but he walks away with her agreement, and that's all he really needs.

He floos into Neville's office; the former leader of Dumbledore's army is the head of Gryffindor now and his office is rather nicer than it had been in McGonagall's day- dotted with pictures of Hannah and the kids, a girl a couple of years older than Chloe and two boys whose names entirely escape him. His DA coin is hanging on the wall as well, next to the list of names Hermione had collected at the Hogshead nigh on twenty-five years ago. He sees his signature about half way down the parchment, nestled in between Dean and Lavender's own names and he's only able to resist the urge to tear it off the wall by Neville's entrance into the room.

"Lot less tartan in this office than there used to be," he mutters, unable to quite meet Neville's eye.

"Seamus." he covers up his surprise with an easy smile, "What can I do for you?"

"I've come for my daughter. Relax," he adds, seeing the hint of worry his words had etched into the other man's face, "I've got her Mam's permission to take her. My Dad died," he explains quietly, "And they were close when she was little, I thought she might want to come over for the funeral."

Neville's expression turns from wary to sympathetic in an instant, "I'm sorry." He hesitates, motioning him through the door and down a short flight of stairs, "If there's anything I can do…"

"Thanks." Seamus nods, "How are the kids?" he adds, desperate to steer the conversation away from him

"Oh, you know." Neville's smile turns fond, "Alice is in her last year- dating one of the older Weasley girls and thinks we don't all know about it. Nate's just started in September- a Gryffindor" he adds proudly, "And Ben was nine last week."

A silence stretches between them. He knows that Neville is aware that he has other children- but after him and Lavender had divorced, everybody had been forced to choose sides and he'd been the one to leave, so nobody had chosen his. Instead of asking a question of his own, Neville groans as they round a corner and begin to hear the unmistakable sounds of a domestic in the entrance hall.

"Your daughter," Neville motions as Seamus rolled his eyes, "Has a pair of lungs on her."

He speeds up his pace, matching Neville's long strides to his own, "Who's the boy?"

There's no need for an answer. The boy Chloe's having it out with is, from the messy black hair to his skinny build, unmistakably Albus Potter. His daughter has her back to him, hands on hips in a stance that is so her mother that it almost brings him out in a cold sweat, "You're bloody well stupid if you think I'll fall for that!" he hears her spit, "You know what Al, I'm done with you. I'm bloody well done- so why don't you fuck off back to daddy and leave me the hell alone."

She whirls round and freezes when she sees him, her face draining of colour as she wobbles for a moment, one foot hovering just above the ground. Evidently, she's conscious that the crowd gathered to witness her argument with Albus are still milling around, because she bites her lip and keeps her voice even as she greets him, "Dad."

"Chloe." He replies, keeping his expression neutral in an effort to keep her from running away from him- as far and as fast as she can.

"I think we should continue this conversation in my office, don't you? " Neville, picking up on the uneasy tension in the air, makes a quick motion with his arm, "Chloe?"

She shakes her shock away like a shiver, "What makes you want to think I want to talk to him?"

"Your Grandfather's dead." In the jerk of Chloe's head that follows his statement, he becomes aware of exactly how cruel it had been to deliver the news to her that way. His daughter is a contradiction to him, a Russian nesting doll - too loud colours splashed on the outside layers to cover up her vulnerabilities. Trying to stem an arterial haemorrhage with a sticky plaster is something Seamus understands all too well, so he doesn't even attempt to apologise for the starkness of his explanation, instead settling a hand a few millimetres off of her shoulder as they walk in uncomfortable silence towards Neville's office.

"So," Chloe asks, perching herself against the desk and surreptitiously trying to wipe away any evidence of tear tracks- of anything that could be perceived as a weakness- from her cheeks, "Where are we going. The funeral?"

Seamus nods. "It's on Wednesday. We're going to the cottage first- do you remember it, from the wedding?"

She bites her lip. Now that the anger is gone from her expression she just looks tired, black circles surrounding her eyes like halos and the kind of glazed, downtrodden look he's seen in the mirror more times than he'd care to admit. Her voice is soft when she speaks again, "Sort of. It has a blue door… with ivy on the walls."

"Mmmm." Seamus hums his ascent. "Look, Chloe, I won't make you come home with me. I can pick you up on Wednesday if that's what you really want…," he hesitates, unsure as he always is when dealing with his daughter who is also a stranger, "I know I haven't been a good dad, but… you've got a sister, and a five year old brother you haven't even met yet. I know I've got no right to ask anything of you, but I'd like it if you'd stay with us a while?

She is quite when she agrees. She looks drained, like all the fight has flooded out of her, as if she just…can't anymore. It is almost enough to break his heart.

She follows him into the fireplace and settles into his spare room, chats away with Briana over a piece and jam while he simply watches. Watches and marvels. He tells her what had happened to his Da after a while, finding a lull in the conversation and skating over the details with soft words, all the while trying not to notice how cut up she is. He thinks the truth of that might just kill them both. Chloe's delicate- maybe that's his fault, or her mothers or just bad luck- and there's a lot of anger and betrayal simmering below her expressions and words.

She doesn't trust him and that kills him too.

The funeral is upon them all too quickly. Briana drives barefoot to the church, her heels sitting in Seamus' lap. The kids squish together in the back, listening to an audiobook that doesn't at all fit in with the subdued atmosphere inside the car and Seamus is glad to turn it off when the reach the church. The pews are busy, his father had been popular, both as a guest lecturer at the local university and as a regular member of the church's congregation. Old ladies dressed all in black eye his family with naked interest as the walk up the centre aisle- Seamus knows he's something of a black sheep, a mystery to these people, who have known his Father for so long. The strange boy away at school, living with an English girl, divorced, remarried and never attending a service. He's certain they've all tutted over him, more and more over the years, but they've known him a long time and there's something comforting in the exasperation, their disapproval. Mostly, he supposes, it means they care.

It's a nice service, the reverend had known his father well so it's personal. They bury him next to Seamus' mother with a sense of rightness. No one mourns the timing and there is a general sense of calm, of letting out a breath. Eoghan Finnegan, most of the mourners think, had lived long enough without his wife already and returning him to her now only seems right.

They all get home for the night late, shattered and cranky. It feels like some inexorable defeat, a balloon deflating slowly instead of bursting in an instant. Seamus feels lost. Unsure of what to do next and armed only with the knowledge that he needs to do something about his eldest daughter, or else one day she too will be gone forever.

Chloe, he realises over the next few days, may be sharp with him, but she's good with her brother and sister- letting Tomás, who has a five year olds fascination with her very existence, follow her around when he's not at school, trailing mud and jabbering away at her in a broken mixture of English and Irish Gaelic. Aoife is trickier, if only because she refuses to relinquish her position as the eldest child and, probably more importantly, her role as a little bit of a daddy's girl. Eventually, however, she realises that Chloe is a big girl and that big girls go to Hogwarts and after that her big sister becomes her hero.

"Gryffindor." He hears Chloe tell her the day after the funeral, her hands shoved deep in her pockets as they hover just outside of the front door, "I think you'll be in Gryffindor like Dad. You're brave- you're smart too though, so you might end up in Ravenclaw."

Aoife wriggles from pleasure at the praise and Seamus smiles, resting a hand on Chloe's shoulder for a few moments longer than necessary as he walks past her and into the house.

Later that evening he sits at the kitchen table with Chloe, sipping tea from chipped mugs. There seems to have been a realisation between them. A mutual understanding that they need to say the big things- ask the big questions- now. Because if not now, when.

There's thumping sounds and giggling from upstairs as Briana chases Aoife and Tomás from bath to bed and Seamus can see the pain in her eyes as she looks towards the ceiling and away again just as quickly.

"Why did you leave mum?" She asks. She leaves the 'why did you leave me' unspoken.

Seamus sighs, "It's a long story," He says eventually, "But I don't want to give you the bullshit-y answer." He pauses, staring into his mug, "Your mam and I weren't suited to one another and… I think it took us a long time to realise that. Long enough that we ended up resenting each other. Long enough that neither of us wanted or even knew how to fix it."

Chloe's jaw ticks. "I don't think." She tugs at her hair in frustration. "Why did it get like that? What made you…"

Seamus looks at her sadly. "The war. By the time we were your age your mam and I had been tortured and had our parents murdered and," he hesitates, "we'd both killed people, Chloe- killing does something to you. It stops you from believing in happy ever afters. Sometimes it even stops you from wishing they existed."

"It was a war though." she looks worn out by his justification, "You were fighting."

"And I was only a year or two older than you are now. So was the boy I killed. I made rocks fall on him and he didn't get back up again." His eyes are devoid of amusement. "Those kind of things mess you up, love, in ways you don't realise at the time and… sometimes that means that you do things you might regret later on.

Chloe turns her head to one side, looking up at him through her eyelashes, "You left me." She says softly.

Seamus' voice cracks. "I'm sorry. I told you that the day you were born. I fucked up a lot Chloe. But," he shrugs, "I do love you- for what it's worth."

She curls her legs up to her chin on the rickety wooden seat she's sitting on, balancing her mug against her knee, and when she speaks again she has tear tracks down her cheeks. The kind you get from sadness, and frustration and sheer exhaustion all rolled into one. "I broke his heart." She says, her voice little more than a whisper, "Just to see if I could."

"Who?" Seamus asks, momentarily thrown by her change of subject, "Albus'."

She moves her head in something approximating a nod, carefully avoiding looking him in the eyes. "Trouble is," she says, her voice like smashed glass, rough and sharp. "I think I might have broken my own in the process."

When he wakes up the next morning, Seamus finds himself curled up with his daughter on the living room couch. Someone- Briana, he thinks, as he can hear the faint strains of morning radio and the clattering of pots from the kitchen- had draped a blanket over them while they slept, a worn old thing they keep in the hall cupboard in case a visitor stays the night. It's early still, Sunday's always are for them, and the light streaming through the blinds is faint. Even so he can make out Chloe's face- her eyes are closed, her hair tangled across his chest, and a slight frown between her eyebrows that the distant pull of memory tells him he recognises. It's a cliché, but sleep makes her look younger, with less of the hesitant wariness with which she usually carries herself.

Maybe fifteen minutes later the sound of Aoife and Tomás thundering down the stair causes her to start awake and stare up at him through sleepy eyes. He chances it and ruffles her hair. A flash of irritation crosses her features, but it passes as quickly as a storm cloud and is replaced by a grin as bright as any summer's day.

When they eventually traipse into the kitchen Briana is whipping eggs in a frying pan over the hob as the two littlies make silly faces at each other across the table. Normally Seamus would tell them off, but a combination of tiredness and amusement persuade him to let them be. Even if it means they grow up to be wild hellions with no manners to speak of.

"Will you be coming to church with us, sweetheart?" Briana asks Chloe, turning away from the eggs for a moment and wiping her hands on one of the dishtowels that are scattered across every surface.

Chloe appears caught off guard. As far as Seamus knows, she isn't religious in the slightest. Her mother certainly isn't - their own church wedding and Chloe's baptism had been concessions to him, which had in turn, been concessions to his father and the comforting memory of childhood.

"No need to look so worried." Brianna laughs when she catches sight of Chloe's face, "It isn't a test. I go with the kids but your Da's more of a… how did you put it again? She waves a hand in his direction.

"Cultural Christian- Christmas and Easter, weddings and funerals." He explains easily, "After we eat I'll go down to the café and get breakfast started there. You can come if you'd like?" He tries to keep his voice light but is aware of the slight edge of pleading that creeps in when he asks her the question. His café is something he's immensely proud of, a labour of love than been something of a catharses to him over the years, and he wants for her to see it with a desperation that surprises him.

"Okay." She tells him, "Yeah. That sounds okay."

Seamus bangs through the café's glass door half an hour after opening time with Chloe, carrying a stack of the morning's papers, hot on his heels. At this time in the morning there's only a couple of the regulars sitting at the tables and a few of his long suffering staff- Carlos and Maureen in the kitchen, and Aisha who opens for him every Sunday and if Briana's been on nights at the hospital and he needs to take the kids to school.

"Hiya Boss." Aisha greets him, coming out from behind the counter, "Is this the new waitress you hired?" she adds, giving Chloe a friendly smile.

"Nah." Seamus answers her, taking the papers from his slightly dazed looking daughter and sorting them into the rack on the counter, "She doesn't start till next week. No, this is my daughter, Chloe." He says the last bit proudly; he doesn't get to introduce her often and to hell if he isn't going to make the most of it while he can.

Chloe for her part seems to be taking a moment to get her bearings. He can see her looking around, taking in the familiar colour of the walls, the same colour they have been since she'd helped him paint them six years ago. Watches as her eyes drift over the blackboard and then light up as she catches sight of a gap-toothed photograph of herself in dungarees pinned up next to more recent shots of Tomás and Aoife. He thinks she might have said something then if a man's voice, cracked with age and cigarette smoke hadn't called from the other side of the room, "I was starting to think you'd made that daughter of yours up Seamus, lad. Your da talks about you all the time," he adds as an aside to Chloe, winking through large wire-rimmed glasses.

"Yes, thank you, Éamon." Seamus shouts across the room, "Tell her all my secrets why don't you."

Chloe looks up at him quickly, as if checking to see if what she had heard is correct. He doesn't even have time to nod in affirmation of the fact before Éamon's breakfast companion - his wife of fifty years or so, Sheila- smirks at him, "If we were telling her _all_ your secrets, I have a few I could add to the mix. Pictures too." She chuckles with evident fondness, holding her hand a foot or so off the ground, "We've known your Da since he was yea high." She tells Chloe, "changed his nappies and all."

He can feel himself blush, the red rushing to his cheeks and blossoming like a flower. There aren't all that many people left who knew him before he went to Hogwarts and those few that did like to bring it up every time they see him. Chloe looks interested though. Her face lights up at the idea of potentially incriminating information about her father, the way he knows his would have when he was her age, so he inclines his head slightly in Éamon's direction. The old man nods slightly in response, pulling out one of the empty chairs positioned at either end of the small wooden table. "Park your bum, lass." He tells Chloe. "I can think of a few things we can talk about while your Da goes and yells at people in the kitchen or whatever else it is he actually does around here."

The look of mingled shock and pleasure Chloe has at the invitation is the only thing that stops Seamus from giving Éamon the finger.

The sky's still bright and clear when they get home that evening - the way it is in summer no matter the lateness of the hour. Once they've had tea, Chloe curls up on the sofa opposite Briana, reading a book that had once belonged to his mother. He recognises its worn pages and battered spine with its fading colours as one of her favourites. It had been a gift from his father, Seamus recalls being told, they day she had told him that he had unwittingly married a witch. As a young child he remembers his mother lifting the book down from a high shelf and letting him trace his finger along the inscription his father had scrawled across the title page:

'The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.'

Chloe stifles a yawn with her sleeve and takes a sip from a mug of tea at her feet. His father had always said that Chloe looked a lot like his mother and Seamus had never really been able to see it himself. Watching her read though, he sees something familiar in the way that she scans the lines, when her eyebrows lift as she turns the pages and how the set of her jaw takes him back decades, to the days when he'd received bedtime stories not told them. He lets the nostalgia wash over him and is surprised by how little it hurts.

He wonders what his mother would have made of the man he's become. About Chloe and Aoife and Tomás, Briana and Lavender. The messes he's made along the way. He thinks she'd have knocked some sense in to him- pulled punches in favour of acerbic comments, as was her way, until he'd made better choices. Still, he also likes to think she'd be proud that he's getting there by himself.

He shakes of his thoughts with a half-smile and leaves his wife and daughter to it, padding up the staircase to the younger kids rooms, a cup of lukewarm tea in one hand and a small glass in the other. He pokes his head round Aoife's door and reminds her that it'll be time to get ready for bed in half an hour before walking into Tom's and gently laying the water down on his bedside table. His son appears a few minutes later wearing a clean set of pyjamas decorated with a pattern of pirate ships, hair tousled where he had determinedly pulled the t-shirt over his head. He juts out his mouth so that Seamus can inspect his freshly cleaned teeth.

"Good job, a leanbh." He tells his son, "All ready for bed?"

Tomás nods his head and allows his dad to tuck his covers around him. Seamus gets up and closes the curtains, switching on the small bedside nightlight before he turns off the rooms main light. His son shifts slightly as he comes back and sits down on the bed, Tomás has never liked bedtime stories, preferring to chat with either of his parents for a few moments before they leave him alone. Tonight they cover such topics as dinosaurs (a subject that he is studying at school), his friend Malik's new hamster, before his son turns to him and, through sleepy long lashed eyes, asks a question Seamus knows has been coming for a long time,

"What happened to Chloe's mummy?"

His heart freezes. "She lives in London." He explains carefully, "We split up when your sister was little."

"Why?" Tomás has a six year olds inquisitiveness.

"We didn't love each other anymore."

"Oh." His son's brow furrows, in that one action so like his sister that Seamus almost smiles. "Will that happen to you and my Mummy?"

"No." Seamus tells him gently, smoothing his hair down with a kiss, "No, It won't."

"Okay," Tomás clutches at his stuffed kneazle, "Night night, Daddy."

"Night, night Tom." He echoes, sitting on the bed for a few moments longer before getting up and making his way back out into the hall, closing the bedroom door quietly behind him and letting out a breath he'd been holding in for a long time.

He can hear Chloe and Briana chatting down stairs, voices, but not their words, carrying up the staircase. He stands and listens to the for a while breathing in and out to the crest and lull of their conversation before straightening his shoulders and going to carry out the same routine with Aoife.

A couple of days later he's wriggling into a pair of jeans that he's refusing to admit are probably too small for him when he hears the sound of Briana pacing up and down the hallway and then, abruptly slamming the landline down with considerable force.

"What's wrong?" he asks her, stepping out of the bedroom and walking over to where she is standing.

"Fecking hospital is short staffed like bloody always." She explains. "Someone's called in sick so they need me to cover."

He blinks at her uncomprehending. "They need me right now." She says, emphasising the last two words, "And someone needs to take the kids to school."

Seamus looks down at his watch then echoes her earlier profanity. "I have to be at the café in ten minutes. Even if I apparate with them on my way… well, I'm not leaving them standing out in the playground alone for forty minutes. "

"No," Briana agrees, thumbing through the phone book as if looking for divine inspiration. These are all the bits of parenting that they don't tell you about, Seamus thinks wryly to himself. He loves his kids to death, but by Godric, they cause a hell of a lot of problems sometimes.

"What about that little ginger friend of Aoife's mam? I forget her name." Seamus asks after a moment, "Maybe she would pick them up?"

"I'm sure _Leslie_ would." She answers him, her voice dripping with irritation and sarcasm, "Were her whole family not in Orlando for the week."

"I'll do it." Seamus spins round in shock. Chloe is standing on the landing, her short hair a mop of choppy bedhead.

"Do what?" he asks stupidly.

She rolls her eyes, "Take Aoife and Tomás to school. It's only- what? A fifteen minute walk from here."

"Twenty if Tom's dragging his feet. Which he usually does in the morning." Briana answers her with a brilliant smile, "Are you sure you want to sweetheart?" Chloe nods and Briana swoops down on her and kisses her cheek before dashing into their bedroom to pull on her work uniform.

"You're an absolute lifesaver, you know that?" Seamus pulls her into a one armed hug. "I won't get used to this unexpected helpfulness though," he teases her, "After twenty minutes of Aoife whinging about how much she hate maths you'll be ready to run away by dinner time."

That evening, they sit together on the edge of an old stone bridge about a mile or so from the cottage, their legs dangling over the lazily moving river. The sun is shining through the trees, its warm rays cutting through the ever present chill of the air and casting rippling patterns across the water. Chloe turns her head towards him, her fringe, golden flecks illuminated by the light, falling across the face.

"Term ends tomorrow." She says, almost hesitantly. There's a long silence- the kind where hours seem to pass in seconds and the topic of conversation is buried under layers of something still and blurry. The sound of the river curls around both of them, whispering a song that's both loud and quite at once and the distance between them suddenly seems like nothing at all. Slowly, as if she is afraid she might break the fragile sanctity of the moment, Chloe lowers her head until it is resting, just barely, against his shoulder. "I don't want to go home yet."

He breathes out, long and careful. It is a grateful sound, relieved that despite all his mistakes, she is still willing to give him a chance. "Okay."

His firecall with Lavender is short and brutal, but in the end, Chloe is allowed to stay for as long as she wants with the caveat that she has to be home to get her school stuff before next term begins. Chloe talks to her Mam too, chatting away for a good half hour. He doesn't listen in, but he gets the sense that whatever is said is relatively painless, innocuous conversation. Whatever sins he may lay at Lavender's feet, being a bad parent is not one of them. She always seems to know what Chloe needs, and right now that's a slice of normality. The banality and routine of the life she's temporarily abandoned.

He's chopping tomatoes at the kitchen table a week or so later, chatting absentmindedly to Tomás while his daughters play an animated game of Guess Who, when the doorbell rings. He listens for a few moments until he hears the familiar sound of the bolt being drawn back and Briana exchanging indistinguishable words with whoever is on their front step.

"Chloe love," She shouts after a few moments, "There's a young man at the door for you."

His eldest daughter's eyebrows quirk, a small frown forming at the bridge of her nose as she gets up off her chair, promising Aoife that they'll finish the game later in a soft voice. Seamus follows her out of the room with more than a little curiosity. He didn't think that any of her friends really knew where she was and she certainly hasn't asked to borrow the family owl to inform anyone that she's decided to spend her summer holidays in Ireland with her semi-estranged father.

The boy in the doorway cuts an awkward figure, pulling at his sleeves and shuffling his feet while generally trying to make himself look as small as possible. Chloe stops short the moment she sees him and the two regard each other for a long moment in which Seamus seriously considers evicting Albus Potter from his property with extreme prejudice. The moment passes before he gets a chance to do anything however, and Chloe abruptly starts forward again and wraps the boy in a tight hug.

"Want to go for a walk?" Albus asks her

"Yeah." She nods, turning round towards Seamus, a small smile playing around the corners of her lips, "I won't be too long."

Seamus nods and Chloe turns back to Albus, nudging him with her shoulder. "Come on." She tells him, her voice seems to have regained some of the brightness it has been lacking, "You've got to tell me all of the gossip I've missed."

"Well…" Albus' voice floats back to them as he and Chloe walk away from the cottage, shoulder's bumping together, "Half the sixth year Ravenclaws got suspended for an incident involving illicit alcohol consumption that ended in Professor Portcullis having to rescue one of them from drowning in the Black lake, and then my brother snogged a Slytherin in front of the whole school. So no, no gossip really.

Chloe laughs. A proper laugh that reminds him of infectious giggles of her childhood, the kind that made her whole body light up with a kind of warmth he's barely seen from her in the past month and a bit. Strangely it makes him miss his own father in a way he can feel like the cold, right down to his bones.

Briana, somehow able to sense the change in his mood rests an arm against his shoulder. "Come inside," she says. He follows her into the house and plays games with the kids until he's drowned the sadness under a pile of happy memories.

Just before tea he wanders outside to feed the chickens that he's pretty sure they never actually bought but just seemed to turn up one day and bumps into Chloe meandering back to the cottage.

"No Albus?" he asks her lightly, "You didn't kill him and bury his body in the woods did you?"

She swats at him, "His brother picked him up." She explains, pulling herself up so that she's sitting on top the wooden fence he's standing next to

"You two back together then?" he asks gruffly, not really sure if, as her father, he should want to know.

"No." Chloe says, the messy braid Aoife had put in the side of her hair that morning swinging back and forth like a pendulum. "He's got a new girlfriend."

Seamus stands up quickly, knocking over the (mercifully empty) bucket of grain. "For what it's worth, If we did bury him in the woods, they'd probably never find him." He says, trying to find a way to make light of the situation.

It works. Chloe laughs, swinging back down from the fence and linking her arm through his as he walks back towards the cottage. "It's good- thank you though," She tells him. "We're going to be friends…" She hesitates, "I think I could use a friend like him."

He makes a non-committal noise, " _I_ think," He says slowly, "That anyone- but particularly Albus- would be lucky to have a friend like you." She bumps her head off his shoulder, something he has come to recognise as her own special brand of affection, "If you're up for it," He continues, changing the subject, "Aoife was asking to watch Mulan for the nine hundredth time and Briana makes a mean bowl of popcorn."

"That sounds pretty much perfect," Chloe says and he can tell, somehow, that she means it.

The summer is full of days like that: running around in the back garden; water fights; blackberry picking; picnic lunches; beach trips; and lazy nights in, watching Disney movies that, by the end of the holiday, they know all the words to. It feels idyllic, a children's book of what family life should be like. Yes, they have their fights- none of them are exactly made for keeping their tempers in check, and screaming matches that set the windows rattling become practically commonplace. As quick as they are to anger though, they are also quick to forgive and all their petty grudges fall away like waterfalls in moments.

They become a family, not again exactly again, but an expansion on what they had all known before. The kids get used to Chloe being around. They are so instinctively proud and trusting of her, showing her off to all their friends at any chance they get and begging her to play with them. Chloe too, seems to like being a big sister- it's a role that fits her well, she has a kind of patience that Seamus knows comes from neither him nor Lavender- and when it is time for her to go home there are tears on all sides.

"I'll be back at Christmas," she promises a despondent Aoife, "And I'll write."

"Every day?" His younger daughter ask through a petted lip

Chloe shares an amused look with him and Briana over the top of the littler girls head. "Maybe not every day- I have to study sometimes. Is once a week okay?"

Aoife considers this proposition with all the gravitas of a nine year old, before jutting her chin out and nodding. "I think that would be acceptable."

She hugs them all tightly, like she doesn't want to let go, and steps into the fire, lighting it up green and yelling her address into flames. She is gone. It seems like he's only just got her back and now she's gone. He's lost her again and it hurts. It hurts a whole damn lot.

She sends him a letter a week, scribbled in her loopy, slightly haywire, handwriting. She sends them to Aoife too, and to Tomás, all packaged up with little packets of sweets from her (apparently more frequent than actually school sanctioned) trips to Hogsmeade.

Time passes quickly, and it passes slowly. until its Boxing Day and Chloe's standing on their front step again.

Her hair is longer and she's grown out her fringe. She's wearing a bright red jumper with too-long sleeves and fraying edges over a pair of jeans and carrying an unstable pile of wrapped boxes in her arms. Tomás jumps at her, yelling her name over and over again like he can't believe he's actually seeing her, and almost knocks her over, sending her presents scattering all across the floor.

"Good thing none of it was breakable," Chloe smiles wryly as she hugs him and Briana quickly before helping the kids gather up the gifts and transport them to the tree in the living room where the sounds of frenzied ripping of paper and excited squeals are instantly audible.

The afternoon is all about the littlies, who are still hyped up on adrenaline and left over sweeties and demand all of their big sister's attention, but after everyone else has gone to bed the two of them sit in the kitchen drinking tea out incredibly tacky Christmas mugs. They talk about anything and everything, comparing their Christmas days (His church and turkey dinner at the café, hers Chinese takeout and a Richard Curtis Dvd). It's nearly midnight before she stands up to go to bed, washing out her cup in the sink and setting it upside down on the draining board.

She pauses at the door, before turning and taking a piece of crumpled parchment from her jean pocket. "Professor Longbottom gave me this for you." She tells him, putting it down on the table in front of him. "He told me to tell you that they really want you there."

He doesn't open it until he hears her footsteps on the staircase. The writing is painfully familiar. The jagged letters reminding him of motto's carefully emblazoned on stone walls in the dead of night- an illicit promise of rebellion.

He unfolds the note with shaking hands. Scanning the words, reading them twice- three times even.

He can't believe it'll be twenty five years come May.

"I've never been to one before." He tells Briana next morning when she asks what it says, "A memorial, I mean. Lavender wouldn't set foot in Hogwarts. We used to spend the day getting lost in a city we'd never been to before- and after I married you, well, it just seemed easier to stay away."

"Easier for whom?" She asks gently. Always able to cut directly to the source.

"Me. Everyone. Chloe. You." He sighs, turning away from her and angling his face up towards the ceiling. "I did unforgivable things there. You deserve better than to see it- and you will see it. You'll see it my eyes, in everyone's eyes. It wasn't as righteous as the newspapers like to claim, kids fighting kids, fathers fighting sons, friends fighting friends. And everywhere people dying and screaming and…unforgivable" he trails off bracing himself against the kitchen counter, fully aware that the children are in the next room and that the morning cartoons only cover so much noise.

Briana slides her arms around his waist, slotting her chin into the hollow of his neck. "I forgive you," she whispers. "I forgive you anything and everything. How could I not? None of us would be here if it wasn't for what you did. Not Chloe, not Aoife or Tomás." She pauses. "You should go." She says, "I'll come with you, the kids will come with you- we'll go together. You deserve that from us. The knowledge that we love you. That we will never blame you for fact that you did a bad thing in order to accomplish something good. "

He breathes out, turning towards her but not quite meeting her eyes. "I'll think about it, alright." He says, his voice soft like even his saying out loud it could make it real.

"Alright." She echoes.

Chloe flits between his house and her Mam's flat for the rest of the Christmas holidays and, for the first time, he is the one to put her on the Hogwarts express after the calendars change and they find themselves in rainy January.

"It's been a while since I've been here," he says to Chloe, looking around, "Nothing much has changed."

"No?" Chloe asks him distractedly, waving at Albus and his parents across the platform. They wave back with big smiles for his daughter and, he slowly realises, for him. He smiles back. It's been a long time since he's seen either Harry or Ginny in person, at least a decade really, but they don't look much different. He wonders how he looks to them; forty-three now and with all the grey hair and wrinkles that three kids provide.

He's startled out of his reverie by the trains whistle, sharp and piercing, and Chloe throwing her arms around his neck.

He holds her tightly, "Bye special girl." He whispers into her hair.

She pulls away from him, starting at the nickname he hasn't used since she was a child, a big grin unfolding across her face as he picks her trunk up off the ground and swings it up onto the train.

"Bye dad." She says, and then, "I'll miss you."

"You too- now hurry up," he chivvies her off the platform, "You don't want to get left behind."

She does as he says, walking away down the corridor to find her friends. He stands on the platform and watches the steam engine until the last glimpse of scarlet has disappeared from view.

Months pass until suddenly it's March and he's sitting on the carpet in His and Briana's bedroom, staring at the pieces of his Mam's jewellery spread out across the sheets until they all blur into one. They'd never been rich, his parents, but they were definitely comfortable, and his Mam had always liked to buy herself pretty things.

"That one." Briana says, suddenly appearing over his shoulder, one hand holding a mug of strong smelling coffee and the other pointing at a simple necklace. "I think that one would suit her."

He picks it up. It's made of silver, a flower hanging on the end of a delicate chain. "You think?" he asks, turning it over in his hand.

"Yes." Briana says firmly, so he packages it up in a little box he'd bought especially for this purpose. He allows Brianna to wrap it though (she is much better at these kind of things) while he cajoles Aoife and Tomás into signing the card with rounded, childish letter and what looks like hundreds of scribbled X's and O's.

When he was twenty six he'd held his daughter for the first time, standing beside a hospital window and looking out at the snowy ground below. Tomorrow that same little girl turns seventeen. Time is running away from him, leaving the impression of days lived behind like breath on a frosted window.

Not for the first time, he feels old beyond his years.

The second of May 2023 dawns cold but clear. Grey in a way that's typical of Irish weather. Seamus hasn't slept all night- insomnia gripping him in a metal vice. He is afraid of what he'll see if he closes his eyes. His nightmares are less frequent now, but they still come, hitting him when he least expects it and leaving him paralysed under the covers. On certain days they are always worse and he's made his decision now; he's going today and he doesn't want the doubts and fear to creep back into his head.

When there is a steady stream of light filtering through the gap where the blind is not quite long enough to cover the whole window, and the LED light of his bedside alarm read 05:30, he quietly slips out of bed. Briana mumbles in her sleep, but doesn't wake, shifting and repositioning herself until she is curled around the blankets he has vacated. He pads through the hall, stopping to peer through Aoife and Tomás' bedroom doors (as if to reassure himself that they are still there, still breathing), and treads carefully down the stairs, almost absentmindedly skipping over the step that creaks. He makes a cup of tea and sits down at the table, taking long slow sips. The steam coming off the mug is comforting- a piece of a routine that allows him to feel like it is just a normal day, even if only for a little while.

The ceremony starts early, ten o clock in the Hogwarts grounds, but it's barely nine when the leave the house, Aoife dragging him along gently by his fingertips as they walk down the front steps and out of range of the anti-apparation wards he has set up all around the property. He thinks that Briana's talked to the children, explained to them at least some of what today means to him and why. He hadn't managed to find the words to tell them himself, but he knows he will have to someday soon- before Aoife goes off to Hogwarts and reads it in a textbook or hears stories in passing gossip. For now though, he'd rather keep her in relative ignorance. Innocence, he knows all too well, cannot be recovered.

They have to go to Dublin for the Portkey to Hogwarts- an annoying side-effect of the Treaty for International Magical Transportation- and flash their passports at a couple of secretaries in the Transport office before he is handed a piece of plastic that looks a lot like a curtain rail and told to stand in a corner until it leaves. He gets a few speculatively curious looks from the staff when they combine his age and appearance with the destination on the carefully filled out form he'd handed them when they'd walked through the door, but thankfully no-one actually says anything.

"Hold tight." He murmurs to Briana as one of the staff gives him the thirty second signal, looking down to make sure the kids hands are in the proper positioned, held securely on the bar underneath his own. She smiles back at him and is still smiling when they land collapsed in an undignified heap on the stone flagged floor of the Hogwarts entrance hall.

In the time that it takes them to get to their feet and dust themselves off, Neville and his wife have made their way over to great them. Neville ignores his proffered hand in favour of a quick but firm hug.

"I'm glad you came, Seamus." Hannah tells him softly, "It'll mean a lot to everyone."

Seamus shuffles his feet, "Well," he begins uncomfortably, "It's a big day isn't it. Twenty-five years."

There's a long pause after he says this. None of them really appear to know what to say next so Seamus motions to his left, "This is my wife, Briana, and…err… my younger two. Aoife and Tomás."

The introduction seems to jump start Neville and Hannah into action. They greet his family an almost over enthusiastic chorus of smiles and nice to meet yous.

Neville looks around vaguely, "Ours are around here somewhere," He explains, "In the hall with the others. Chloe's there too," he adds, "With the Potter's last I saw her."

Seamus nods in acknowledgement, falling into step beside Neville as Hannah chats away to Briana and the kids. "Feel weird to be back?" The other man asks him.

"You have no idea." Seamus replies, "Though sometimes it feels like it happened yesterday, you know, I wake up and expect to be in the dormitory…"

Neville makes a noise of agreement as they cross the threshold. The doors to the great hall were wrecked, hanging off their hinges and covered in burn marks from curses that missed their marks, the last time Seamus saw them. They've been replaced with darker wood that's missing the scratches of history he remembers and today they're propped open. The house tables are gone and in their place stands a patchwork of families and friends chatting in loosely arranged groups. Neville opens his mouth like he wants to say more but a shout causes his gaze to dart across the room to where a teenage girl with strawberry blonde hair and hand in hand with a girl who, by her looks can't be anything other than a Weasley, is waving him over. "Alice. My daughter," Neville explains apologetically, "I'd better go over and see what she wants. Catch you later?"

"Okay," Seamus says as Neville strides away from him. Briana is still chatting to Hannah Longbottom so he stands still for a moment as if stuck to the ground, taking in the familiar room and the faces of people who even ten years hasn't made entirely unfamiliar. His heart beats erratically in his chest. The voices are too loud. The clothes too bright…

He takes several deep breaths like he's taught himself to do when the memories threaten to overwhelm him. He tries to focus, scans the room until he spots Chloe's head in the crowd. Her short dark hair in a spiky ponytail bobs around as she gesticulates something to Albus Potter. She has her back to him and doesn't notice his approach until he's only a few feet away and Al nudges her.

"Dad. Hi." She throws her arms around him, burying her face in his neck. "I'm so glad you came." She whispers.

He holds her for a long time before letting go, keeping an arm wrapped round her shoulders. "You remember Albus?" she asks him, an edge of almost embarrassment in her voice as she inclines her head to the boy on her right. "His brother and Sister," she nods to a girl with a face full of freckles cropped red hair and a boy taller than Albus who's attempting to wrangle a red haired toddler- the daughter of one of his cousins? It's hard to keep track of all the Weasley's. Both of them greet him with warm politeness.

"And obviously you know his parents…" Chloe continues, bumping his shoulder with the side of her head

"Yeah." He agrees, accepting Harry's firm but handshake and Ginny's kiss on the cheek with a smile.

"It's been a long time," Harry says. His voice is deeper than Seamus remembers. "How have you been?"

"Better. I think." Seamus answers honestly. Then, "How about you? Still snoring?" He asks lightly

Harry has a poker face that would put a professional gambler to shame, "I don't know what you're talking about." He says, though the effect that is somewhat ruined by Ginny nodding vigorously behind him.

Harry chuckles then his face turns serious as someone, aided by a sonorous charm, calls across the room that there to go outside so that the ceremony can start. The chatter and gentle laughter fades from the air in seconds and without any kind of organisation the assembled people turn, seemingly as one, and file out the door and out of the castle. Briana finds him and Chloe as they walk in the direction of the Black Lake. She's holding the hands of both kids, but they quickly abandon their mother when they catch sight of their sister, leaving Seamus free to walk shoulder to shoulder with his wife. To him Briana means safety and survival and warmth. He needs those things right now. The solid comfort her presence, her silence provides him.

Seamus has never seen the Hogwarts war memorial before. It's a hunk of white marble, fashioned into an obelic shape, printed all over with the names of fifty or so students, teachers and ordinary people who answered the call to battle and died because of it, carved deep into the stone. Without prompting, the surviving members of the DA and the order of Phoenix and anyone else who stood up against Voldemort that day, file, hand in hand with their families, into some sort of semi-circular formation in front of it. Behind them, the students of Hogwarts line up, class by class, until Seamus can see nothing behind him but a sea of bodies.

Someone has set up a podium beside the memorial and after a few short speeches (no one really seems to want to linger over their words, all too aware of the hurt that still runs deep through the crowd), Kingsley Shacklebolt gets up and, in his slow measured voice, began to read the names from the memorial. One after the other. Familiar names. The names of people whose children stand in the crowd today. The names of people who never had the chance to have children because they died too young. It is the worst kind of torture.

Seamus tenses up after the first five and it is only Briana's hand in his that keeps him in the one place.

He doesn't cry and is not alone in that- the crowd, or the DA at least, are stony faced, standing in rigid silence like they had for funeral after funeral a quarter of a century ago. They have all seen too much horror for something as simple as names to break their masks, and certainly not at this. The public face of their grief will be harsh and plain. It will not inspire pity or any great sentiment. There will be time for all that later, on different days that mean something to them individually- birthdays and valentines days and New Year's days- when they will be left alone to their grief. They will not allow their tears to become headlines, to relegate sacrifices to tragedies.

The list finishes with Rose Zeller. Children who entered Hogwarts in alphabetical order, one by one, remembered here the same way. Seamus' memory knows some of their faces, tiny eleven year olds with pigtails and to big school uniforms that almost tripped them as they walked across the stage towards a tattered old hat.

It'll be Aoife making that walk next year if she gets her way, he thinks to himself as the crowd starts walking again. The majority of the assembled people head back towards the Castle, but he follows the rest of the DA towards Hogsmeade, from where they will apparate to the Leakey for a barbeque on what's turning out to be a gorgeous May day. They've been thinking about keeping Aoife in Ireland, he and Briana, the school's at least as good as Hogwarts and nearer besides, but she's fighting them tooth and nail to go to the school she's heard so much about from him and her big sister. He thinks they'll give in eventually and let her go. Aoife's always been good at getting what she wants.

The pubs empty when they get there. Hannah shuts it every year, someone explains to him as they all tuck into the food and drink that's been left out on a couple of huge trestle tables set up in the beer garden. The atmosphere has turned almost festive in a heartbeat. He's lost track of Aoife and Tomás, who are off running around with a gang of kids their own age and all the grown-ups are standing around in loose groups, bottles of Butterbeer in their hands, talking loudly. Catching upon news and sharing stories. Ron and his brother George are over in a corner setting up what looks like a couple of hundred Weasley's Wizard Wheezes fireworks for later in the afternoon, Ginny's laughing about something or other with Luna and a slightly bewildered looking Professor McGonagall (who despite her slightly alarming insistence earlier, he's never going to feel comfortable calling Minerva) and Parvati appears to be trying to distract her husband from cursing any of the large selection of teenage boys gawping at his ridiculously pretty selection of Daughters. Neville is standing next to a huge barbeque contraption, using his wand to turn pieces of meat. He's wearing a 'kiss the chef' apron and, as Seamus watches, Hannah turns away from her conversation to do exactly that, giggling as he accidently incinerates one of the burgers with an overenthusiastic wand movement.

After he's eaten, he finds himself standing with Oliver Wood, trying to explain the rules of Quidditch to his wife. Oliver, who's now been coaching the Magpies for the better part of two decades, seems to have taken Briana's lack of knowledge as a personal offence and they are quickly joined by an enthusiastic scrum of the old Gryffindor team, talking over each other and arguing about who was worst Captain they ever had. By the time he leaves them Angelina Johnson appears to be ahead in the polls and Oliver's daughter Charlotte has come over to see what all the fuss is about. She looks so much like her mum that it takes the breath right out of Seamus' chest, petite and dark haired and, by the look of the wedding band on her ring finger, already married. She'll be 25 now he thinks, six weeks older than the battle itself.

He can remember her from that day, he thinks. A tiny thing cradled to her dad's chest on one of the house table benches, twenty or so feet away from her mother's body.

His thoughts are still dark when Susan Bones waves him over. They haven't spoken in years, she'd been a friend of Lavender's back in the day and staunchly critical of their spilt. They chat lightly for a bit, mostly about their kids- she and Ernie have three, the eldest, Angus three years ahead of Chloe and the other two a few years younger.

Any animosity that had existed between them seems to have faded with the years, but the conversation is still a touch awkward. He understands why only when he asks after Ernie and she holds up her left hand. The ring is ostentatious in its absence.

She smiles wryly is response to his questioning looks and explains, "Divorce. I decided that I deserved better after he decided he preferred men."

He is saved from scrambling for what will almost certainly be an inappropriate reply by the entirely unexpected arrival of his ex-wife. She walks through the door almost hesitantly, pulling on the sleeves of her simple wrap dress, as beautiful and unsure as ever. She looks like she'd rather be anywhere else but there's a determination behind it all that makes Seamus think that, like him, she hadn't arrived at the decision to come lightly. His eyes find Chloe. Their daughter looks shocked, a hand covering her mouth, but when her mum smiles at her she smiles back, her eyes sparkling like he's never seen before.

It's the first time he sees anyone cry that day. Parvati wraps her arms round Lavender with barely concealed tears of joy and it is suddenly clear to Seamus that today is something special to all of them.

"Everybody's here now." He hears someone say behind him, warm affection overpowering any hint of sadness and their voice only grows in strength. It's Luna's he thinks, the complete lack of her usual dreamy tone making it hard to recognise, "It feels right now."

She's right. It's like a dam breaking. Suddenly everybody is hugging and kissing, dancing round each other like bees in a hive. The kids look confused, not really sure what is going on but some bright spark decides that it's time to light off the fireworks and that soon distracts them from the, for the lack of a better word, weirdness going on around them.

Someone drags out a gramophone and suddenly the sound of a Weird Sister's song (a barely disguised rebellion album that Lee Jordan had played over and over again on his Wireless show in between reports of murders and kidnaps) joins the pops and bangs of the exploding rockets and Catherine Wheels.

They've had a lot of growing up to do in the last twenty-five years to bring them here, Seamus thinks that evening. Sacrifice, hurt and screaming matches decorating his life like discarded litter along the way. Not that he regrets his choices, Lavender or Chloe, Briana, the kids, any of it really, not for a second.

The woman he's dancing with echoes his thoughts in her question. "Would you change any of it?" she asks, "If you could go back."

He looks over her shoulder and sees them all.

Briana, holding a glass in her hand, laughs with the young man Lavender had brought along with her- "Mum's toyboy," Chloe had called him, her expression erring halfway between amusement and disapproval. Seamus thinks he understands though. She chooses them young, like he'd chosen to marry a muggle, because for them, that meant getting someone unbroken and unscarred by the touch of the war. Briana looks beautiful, relaxed and happy, seemingly unaware that he is watching her. Eventually she catches his eye and shoots him a bright smile - the kind that says 'I love you' without needing words.

Chloe, winks at him as she spins past with Albus Potter . Tripping over each other's feet and doing awkward hand jive movements and falling around giggling when the song changes to something more upbeat. Chloe who has, if not fixed herself, learned to live with that and mend her own problems. He tells her it only occasionally, but he is more than a little bit proud.

As he watches, Albus' girlfriend cuts in and Chloe swings her little brother up into her arms, making funny faces as he dances him around the garden on her toes.

His family, his children, look happy, relaxed. At ease with themselves and the world.

Someday, a long time from now, they will be grown up. Maybe they will have children of their own- they will be better parents than he ever was. Those children, only shadows and possibilities of things to come for now, will only know about war from what they learn at school and the rose tinted vision he'll present to them when they ask about it one day.

"Seamus?" Lavender asks, squeezing his arm, "Did you hear me?"

"Yes." He says and then, "No. I wouldn't change it. I'd be tempted, but I wouldn't"

It's a more personal question that they've been working off over the last year, trying to put aside their own problems to do what's best for Chloe, but a day like today brings the sentimentality out in people, as well as all the fears and inadequacies they've got about their own lives and the less than stellar example they have together provided for their daughter.

She hesitates, following his gaze to where Chloe is, kicking off her shoes and pulling Aoife into the dancing, pausing to tuck a daisy picked from the grass behind her sister's ear. "We did okay, didn't we?" She asks, eventually.

"Something like that." Seamus answers her eventually, as the song ends and they let go of each other, taking a step backwards, "We did something like that."

 _As always, I own nothing._  
 _The title is from the Frightened Rabbit song of the same name and the quote in Seamus' mum's book is from the Irish poet W. B. Yeats._  
 _You can find me at .com on tumblr, please feel free to come over and say hi._


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